Music: Bluegrass band Twisted Pine performs in Kingston

Tuesday

Nov 28, 2017 at 5:00 PM

By Chad Berndtson/For The Patriot Ledger

Into the constellation of stellar Americana bands in Boston comes Twisted Pine, a four-piece that wears its string band bonafides proudly but also infuses indie rock and pop into a more traditional bluegrass framework. There’s a lot to grab on to, and at its heart are tasty vocal harmonies between guitarist Rachel Sumner and fiddle player Kathleen Parks.

The band, which includes Sumner, Parks, bassist Chris Sartori and mandolinist Dan Bui, has been playing to bigger and livelier crowds throughout 2017, including at September’s Festival on the Farm in Canton. It’s been gathering buzz ever since a 2015 Momentum Award from the International Bluegrass Music Association, and over the past 12 months began touring as a full four piece and shifted its focus more toward original music.

“It’s been really exciting,” said Sartori, who hails from Concord, Mass. “This was the year we basically decided to turn the corner, turn on the jets and get things going, and our original material started clicking.”

Twisted Pine headlines Kingston’s South Shore Folk Music Club at the Beal House on Saturday, December 2, and is back December 23 at Boston’s new City Winery.

The four members hail from all over; Bui is from Houston, Sumner from Lancaster, Calif., and Parks from Newburgh, N.Y. But with Bui, Sumner and Parks all attending Berklee College of Music, the group was born in Boston, adding Sartori – who majored in jazz and performance at U-Mass Amherst – through various connections in the area’s tight-knit roots, Americana and bluegrass scene.

“I had just graduated and moved back to Boston, just kind of figuring out what I wanted to do,” said Sartori, who grew up playing electric bass and cut his teeth on funk, R&B and jamband music before studying jazz and becoming part of a bluegrass band while at school.

The like-minded musicians started coming across one another, especially at bluegrass strongholds like Cambridge’s Cantab Lounge.

“Dan was one of the first people I played with when I moved here,” Sartori said. “It is a very supportive scene. It didn’t realize until I moved here and started playing all the time just how good everyone is.”

Sumner and Parks are the band’s primary songwriters but the foursome has grown comfortable woodshedding together. The band’s self-titled debut album came out in July on Northampton-based folk aficionado label Signature Sounds, whose roster has included everyone from Mary Gauthier, Eilen Jewell and Stoughton’s Lori McKenna to Crooked Still, Joy Kills Sorrow and Lake Street Dive.

They will go back into the studio in December to cut a covers EP, Sartori said, and gear up for an aggressive 2018 on the road, shoring up the Northeast markets where they’re breaking out, while expanding west and south, too.

“The plan,” he says without hesitation, “is to hit it hard.”

Music preview TWISTED PINE 8 p.m. Dec. 2 at the South Shore Folk Music Club at the Beal House, 222 Main St., Kingston, $20-$22 available at the door and via brownpapertickets.com.